Over the past week or so, I’ve been watching the back-and-forth between singer and performer Amanda Palmer and musician Steve Albini. The origin of the feud is this: Palmer used a Kickstarter campaign to raise $1.2 million to fund the recording of her new album. She then asked musicians to volunteer to play with her band on her tour, but didn’t guarantee compensation to any of the volunteers, though as she is paying some musicians at some stops on the tour, but not others. Albini criticized her request on the grounds that she could have found a way to pay musicians if she wanted to. “The reason I don’t appeal to other people in this manner is that all those things can easily pay for themselves, and I value self-sufficiency and independence, even (or especially) from an audience,” he wrote.

The thing is, I do kind of agree with Palmer that, as she puts it “YOU HAVE TO LET ARTISTS MAKE THEIR OWN DECISIONS ABOUT HOW THEY SHARE THEIR TALENT AND TIME.” And for the purposes of this experiment, let’s accept her argument that the funds for recording, designing, and distributing the album aren’t available to pay for touring, and Albini shouldn’t have linked the two. But Palmer is, after all, selling tickets for the tour, and in some cities, those tickets are reselling on sites like StubHub for figures considerably above face value. I understand if she doesn’t have $35,000 or whatever else it would have cost to pay the musicians she’s asked to volunteer on the tour right now. I’m not sure I understand why she couldn’t have adjusted the ticket prices, or her own take on the tour, to make sure she’d have the revenue to pay people who played with her.

And there’s a difference between between people volunteering their time without it being requested of them, or people creating their own opportunities to play even if it means playing for free or for donations, and someone who has money, or the clear power to raise money, asking people to perform for free. Palmer has the right to ask people to play for free, just as people have the right to busk or volunteer their time. But I think it’s rather ambitious of her to expect that people see her as praiseworthy for it, no matter how highly she thinks of herself and what it means to play with her in concert. If you started out playing for free and found models that worked for you, why wouldn’t it be more genuinely admirable to create a more viable and supportive atmosphere for the people coming up after you?

While watching the new fall television pilots and revisiting some old shows that are back this fall, I was struck by a worrisome conclusion. There are a lot of shows that have picked the wrong person to place at the center of their storytelling at the expense of much better characters, or that are treating people other than their true main characters as if they’re the main attraction for purpose of advertising. A bad offender on the latter score this fall is Last Resort, which is running print ads that make it appear as if Scott Speedman is the show’s star, rather than Andre Braugher, who dominates the pilot, for reasons you can probably do the math about. But while it’s one thing to start a show with the assumption that one character is the hook and to have others emerge, it’s a shame to watch a show spend seasons focused on the wrong people.

1. Boardwalk Empire: Now in its third season, Boardwalk Empire remains convinced that the best thing it has going for it is Nucky Thompson, who isn’t much more than a chance for Steve Buschemi to show off and wear great suits. But its strongest assets lie elsewhere. How fantastic would a version of Boardwalk Empire that focused on Chalky White and the rise of an East Coast black middle class and aristocracy be? What about Kelly Macdonald’s fantastic Margaret Schroeder, a woman who transformed her lot in life and now is determined to pay it forward through philanthropy, even if it means challenging a powerful head doctor at a hospital over the cause of maternal health? And then there’s Richard Harrow, mutilated in war, grieving the loss of Angela Darmody, one of the few people who ever understood him, and now raising her child with Gillian Darmody as a monstrous replacement mommy. But any chance the show had to be about soldiers returning from World War I appears to have died with Jimmy Darmody last season, replaced by the increasing presence of showy mobsters, and Boardwalk Empire is poorer for all its lost possibility.

2. How I Met Your Mother: I get it. This show is the story of how Ted met the mother of his children. But it’s also an illustration of the weaknesses of selling sitcoms, which are designed to go on forever, on premises that really only feel viable for a short time. Marshall and Lily’s split, reunion, and road to parenthood, experiment with suburbanization, and return to the city is the true big arc story of How I Met Your Mother. And I’m as sick of waiting for Ted to grow up as Ted is as waiting for the love of his life to show up.

3. Revolution: NBC’s new post-apocalyptic drama wants to capture the cachet of The Hunger Games so badly that it turned its main character, Charlie, into a person I refuse to call anything but Fake Katniss. She’s got a leather jacket, a bow, a penchant for woodsiness, but entirely lacks a personality. And Revolution has the same problem that The Hunger Games does: the world it’s set in and the events it explores means that what the knowing adults are up to is vastly more interesting as story material than watching kids run around. At least The Hunger Games‘ kids were relatively well-developed. Revolution doesn’t even have that going for it, and it’s particularly painful to see it focus on its CW-quality leads when Zack Orth’s former Google executive character’s been relegated to the wings, and assigned the task of providing Hurley-style quips.

4. New Girl: Watching the premiere episode of the second season of New Girl, I was struck by two things. First, Jess isn’t even close to the new girl in the apartment she shares with her male roommates anymore. And second, the show found its legs last year when it turned into an exploration of masculinity, rather than a celebration of Jess’s Manic Pixie grade school teacher. Jess isn’t a terrible character, and the show’s pokes fun at some of the whimsy-cures-everything attitude that was so gratingly front and center early in the show’s first season. But still, if it weren’t for all the branding that went into making New Girl a Zooey Deschanel vehicle that’s probably impossible to undo at this point, it would be nice to see the show recenter on the ensemble that makes it so strong.

5. Modern Family: ABC’s smash hit made waves in the offseason when production was delayed on new episodes because of a nasty contract dispute between the producers and the show’s adult stars. It’s too bad, because increasingly, they’re the least interesting part of the show. Mitch and Cam are a TV-sterilized sexless gay couple. Gloria’s a bombshell stereotype. Claire gets stuck with periods-make-ladies-crazy storylines. But the kids remain the most winning part of Modern Family. If the families involved had some more children, you could build an entire show about the dynamics of the siblings and cousins. And in a television environment where kids get to be props more than actual people, a program from the perspective of young people would be fascinating.

If you needed your regular reminder that religious fundamentalists, no matter their faith tradition, can end up in the same place, it’s worth watching Todd Starnes, a Fox News commentator, use the Obama administration’s response to the protests sparked by Innocence of Muslims to call for condemnation of popular culture like South Park that, in his perspective, denigrates Christians:

For all that people who dislike Muslims try to draw distinction between values articulated in Islam or attributed to Islam and their own beliefs and worldviews, there can be a lot of overlap. Egypt may be the country with a law against denigrating Abrahamic faiths. It may be true that, as the New York Times put it last week, “Where Americans prize individual choice, Egyptians put a greater emphasis on the rights of communities, families and religious groups.” But just as there are people in Egyptian society who are attracted to an American model of individual rights and free speech, Starnes’ remarks are a reminder that there are people in American society who want more respect for religious groups, as long as the groups that get the most respect are their own.

The bridge is yours.

-Seriously. End How I Met Your Mother, already.

-I don’t even care what the project’s about, but if Guillermo del Toro and HBO are working together, I want it to happen.

-Claire Danes on playing bipolar and Damian Lewis on Brody’s relationship to Carrie.

-What Revolution can learn from Lost and Game of Thrones.

-Will.i.am is making a competitive science and technology show because why not.

-Hobbitses:

Over at Women and Hollywood, Melissa Silverstein has what appears to be an early look at figures from the latest report from San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film (the report doesn’t appear on the institute’s site yet). In the last season, according to the figures Silverstein reported, 26 percent of the television shows aired on the broadcast networks and reality programming, were created by women. Silverstein adds what I think are some useful caveats:

This is up one point from last year and five points since the 1997-98 season.

Some things to note:

Women creators rose from 18% to 26%.
Women writers make up 30% of the staffs.
Women make up 25% of executive producers. That’s up three points from the previous year.
I wish the stats actually tracked the actual jobs on the TV shows including all the writing positions so we can see where women are at the different levels. Are women stuck in the staff writer positions? Are women getting promoted to the next levels? That’s what I want to know.

I’d add a couple more. First, I’ve stopped caring about year-on-year data as a meaningful measure of women’s progress in any category in Hollywood, be it highest-paid actresses or the number of women employed in writers’ rooms. These numbers spike one year and fall the next, both because there are so few people involved in these positions in any case, and because they can climb dramatically when women become a trend and tank if a show or several shows get cancelled. We’ll know that change is permanent when the numbers climb steadily over a period of years, and when there aren’t dramatic dips in between. Structural improvement is what matters, not cyclical improvement.

Second, measuring who creates shows is of limited utility. As much as I hate to say it, because I do think it’s great when men and women can partner on projects, it’s not necessarily a test of whether women creators are doing better if the shows they create are sold jointly with male co-creators. If women create shows, that doesn’t mean they’re running them. Whitney Cummings’ creation of 2 Broke Girls isn’t much of a victory on the substance, and it’s not much a victory behind the camera, given that Michael Patrick King’s creative vision now dominates the show. And as I broke down last season, just because women create television shows doesn’t mean they, or whoever end up running those shows, hire other women to write for them.

I want to see progress on these figures. And I do celebrate the shows that women sell, if only because they mean more women with experience, and with some money from studios that if nothing else, supports them as they work on the next thing. But I also don’t want to be fooled by one year of improving figures into believing that the historically resistant television industry has actually started addressing its deep-seated issues with women, both in front of the camera and behind it.

This post contains spoilers through the September 18 episode of Sons of Anarchy.

Wayne Unser has always been one of my favorite characters, on any television show. His backstory with the Sons would make a tremendously rich part of the backstory if Kurt Sutter ever makes his First Nine show, both personally and politically. And after four seasons of reaction and declining power, there’s something tremendous about watching him rise from a beating with new purpose. He starts from a low point. “You really come over to feed the bird?” Clay asks him as they confront Gemma’s ruined home, Wayne not entirely able to stand on his own power. “She’s on her own trip these days,” Wayne admits, acknowledging what his gestures of loyalty have often meant to a woman who has often been attracted to more violent, unstable men.

But he peels himself literally and emotionally off of Gemma’s floor and takes himself back to his old office for a conversation with Eli Roosevelt that brings both their races and their visions of the governance of Charming. Wayne kept quiet when Clay insisted that the attack must have been further black retaliation for Tig’s killing of Pope’s daughter, but it’s because he’s saving a theory for himself. “This wasn’t black retaliation,” he tells Roosevelt. “It felt more white to me.” Roosevelt is skeptical, asking him: “Really? And what does white feel like?” “Sloppy. Clumsy,” Wayne explains. “The beatdown was obligatory, not angry.” Much like Homeland and Carrie’s suspicions of Brody, this is a case where we know Wayne is right, given that we see white men dumping Clay’s safe, a white man reading the paperwork recovered from it. But it’ll be fascinating to see him prove it, and along the way, forge an identity that doesn’t involve the Sons, or Gemma. “I learned how to make it work with the Sons,” he tells Roosevelt, who has been resisting precisely that in a repudiation of Unser’s term. “And yeah, I got a little more comfortable with them than I should have. But I never did dirty work. Still don’t. I’m going to be poking around these home invasions. I find anything, I’ll let you know. I’d appreciate the same.”

That’s an idea of a partnership, rather than a real one. And it’s interesting to see that wisp of a relationship in the air, especially as Jax is finding a new mentor. Jax may be at the head of the table, but his vision for what he’ll do once he’s there remains considerably underdeveloped. Now that Clay is in exile and John Teller’s vision is in doubt, Jax needs someone new. And in Nero, he finds an ally who isn’t enmeshed with the club or its business deals, someone who’s developed an effective, independent business model, a man who seems at peace with himself and his family. He doesn’t need to scramble for more money from the Sons, telling Jax that he’s letting them hide there because “Let’s just consider this networking, okay? Maybe at some point, you get to help me.” He explains to Jax that his business deal with the women he runs doesn’t involve a huge profit margin because the long-term stability of the business is more important than the short-term gain. “I take 25 percent in house, 30 for house calls,” he says. “It don’t pay to be greedy. You got to treat your girls good. They stay happy. They got regulars. The money stays steady.” And unlike Jax, whose sons live at home, with their mother, Nero makes time for his son, who is severely disabled and lives in a facility. “My first boy was born with his insides upside down. His mother was a junkie. I wasn’t paying attention, either,” Jax admits. And despite Nero’s laid-back attitude, his mild, “Sorry. I don’t get out much,” to Jax, he’s more than capable of handling the car chase. The Sons’ model may be polluted. But Nero represents a vision of criminality governed by respect, even kindness. It doesn’t surprise me to see Gemma come back to him either. One of her husbands is dead, the other nearly dead to her. Nero, who had fun with her, gave her son shelter, found him an officiant for his wedding, represents a third attempt at a possible family.
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If you missed President Obama on the Late Show last night, here he is:

The line that’s getting a lot of attention is Obama’s reminder that the president represents everyone, a line he had to deliver that’s the obvious rejoinder to Mitt Romney’s nasty, condescending remarks about ignoring the 47 percent of people who will never vote for him. And that’s a line that Obama probably had to deliver. But I think the real power of this appearance is that it reveals how that video gives Obama the tool he needs to connect all the themes of his campaign, and to draw a final, and perhaps deadly, comparison with Mitt Romney.

“The American people, they work so hard,” Obama told David Letterman. “The progress we’ve made since the Great Recession is because we’ve got single moms out there working two, three jobs to help make sure their kids can go to college. And we’ve got small business owners who are keeping their doors open and keeping their employees on even though it means they may not be taking down a salary.”

In other words, we all built that. The hope that we placed in Obama, as he said in his convention speech, he placed in us. And that hope, as Obama described it, is a pact. It’s an agreement between the people who are building their lives with everything they’ve got that if a step in that process fails, or the business plan they built to get themselves from one class stratum from another, from a limited array of options to a richer one, fails, that there will be something there to help them regroup and formulate the next plan.

Mitt Romney hates being called entitled or privileged, so much so that in the video Mother Jones uncovered, he insisted “I have inherited nothing…There is a perception, ‘Oh, we were born with a silver spoon, he never had to earn anything and so forth.’” He seems to have forgotten that people who received decidedly more modest assistance from the government rather than stock portfolios from their fathers don’t like being called the inverse of privileged: lazy and selfish. “There are not a lot of people out there who think they’re victims,” Obama said on Late Night. “There are not a lot of people who think they’re entitled to something.” If Obama’s team plays this right, Romney may get a reminder that he and the people he scrambled to dismiss and distance himself from have something in common. It’s not only Mitt Romney who isn’t defined by the help he got along the way, no matter the source.